I Am Teacher 2.0

I've now completed Steve Hargadon's Teacher 2.0: Using the Web for Your Personal and Professional Growth, and overall found it to be a very beneficial process. The workshop day back in August was a great introduction, covering many of the same concepts, and I benefited from being able to go back over the ideas in my own time, to really take in the big ideas.

How often do we give our students the opportunity to slow down and process something they have been exposed to? Particularly if they already appear to have achieved competence. There is a difference between being able to do something, and seeing the big picture and significance of the ideas behind it.

For me, that's an important take-away message.

You might like to check out my 'Personal Web Presence', created during completion of the above series of tasks: http://www.natashaglaister.com

I would love to receive feedback or suggestions on it!

Is it weird that I feel like Zuckerberg?

Something amazing is happening in my class at the moment.

The idea has been cooking away, like all big ideas do, for some time now. Little tidbits of information would be added to the pot, I would hear or see or read something new, that would lead me in a new direction.

Like the ingredients for a great recipe, these thoughts gradually accumulated.

Yesterday, my online community was born. Research tells us that prospects are poor for online communities that are unsupported by offline contact in some form. So my existing community of learners, my year seven class, were offered something new to try - a simple, closed social networking page (a Ning to be precise).

I was at a PD last week, run by Steve Hargadon, who spoke of his teenage daughter who had recently been allowed to sign up for Facebook. He said he could see her transforming in front of him, as her world-view expanded. In the last 36 hours, I have started to see the same thing happening for my students.

There was a buzz in the room as they played with it, tinkering, tweaking, personalising. Taking ownership. Later in the day, they were completing some online tasks, and the website was open in the background. It wasn't a distraction, they still worked, but they remained connected behind their computer screens. We started a conversation about the guidelines for their community, how we could make it a positive environment. Nobody needed to have an acceptable use policy shoved at them, yet the phrases they chose could have been taken from one.

After school, they kept playing. Exploring, seeing what it could do. They shared photos, comments. Connections.

They were talking about it at school today.

I knew from the buzzing of emails pushing through on my phone during a lecture tonight (I heard John Hattie speak, which is a whole other blog post) that there had been some activity, but I was amazed at what I found when I opened up the site. Aside from the chatter, which is valuable enough in itself, aside from the shared and appreciated photos and videos, here were 13 year old kids, online at 9:30, having message board conversations about how they as a class had slacked off in the last few weeks, and organizing to meet up before and after school to catch up on homework. Ideas sparking other ideas, with another wanting to create (quote!) "a list of educational websites".

These kids don't often say a lot in class.

But I think I'm helping them to find their voice.

Why? Why not?

Why not try unblocking access to social media sites?

If we block them, really, we might as well block the entire internet, because the whole web is transforming. NON social media is going the way of Geocities - the 1990's dodo.

Why is it ok to create a false bubble that functions nothing like the real world for our students?
Why does the notion of "real world" even exist as a concept that exists outside of school? What is school if not the real world?
Why do budgets and policy and FEAR have to control the way I teach?
If we want our students to be creative - why is MY creativity as a teacher being stifled?
Why is "not enough people will use it" a reason to prevent usage by the people who will?
Why isn't monitoring enough? Since when is it enough to rely on electronic systems in place of actual human beings' judgment?
Why won't schools believe that filtering doesn't work? Since filtering was implemented, has cyber-bullying and inappropriate content access disappeared? Didn't think so.
Just because we can "prevent" misuse by blocking access, why does that mean we should?
Why shouldn't my students be allowed to contribute to their digital footprint in school? So they might use their gmail accounts to access chat - so what? Since when do we ban speech in schools?

Instead...

Why not teach using social media - or at the very least help kids understand the values behind it while emersed in an authentic environment, and help them shape the social media - rather than just passively letting it shape them?
Why not do what we always talk about our students doing, and take a RISK! Sure, it might not work, but so what? Risk averse, safe behaviour, doesn't lead to progress. It just means we keep doing the same things over and over and over again. Not only are we not learning from history, but we're failing to even acknowledge that it exists! We've managed to work out that abstinence in sexuality & drug education doesn't work - instead we teach pros and cons, we teach about personal responsibility, and heaven forbid - EDUCATED CHOICE!

So why, when it comes to social media, are we so afraid to do the same thing?!?

Managing Information Overload

I think most of us have trouble with information overload at some point - and I was having the problem regularly! My biggest issue was organsing the information I found.

I am fairly new to the world of Twitter, but have found it a sensational way to stay at the cutting edge of education. I think I've learnt more from Twitter in the last few months than in all the PD I have done since starting teaching! I love that it allows me to jump in and jump out whenever I have a few free minutes.

One problem I have found however, is that the information comes thick and fast, and sometimes it can be very hard to keep up over the course of a busy day. Tools, articles, blog posts, new ideas and strategies - I may spot something that looks fantastic, but if I only have a couple of minutes, whatever amazing tidbit someone had shared would likely disappear. I have made use of a few tools that make my Twitter life much easier.

1. I connect all my devices to my Twitter account. Simple! iPhone, iPad, Laptop, Desktop. No matter where I am, if I have a couple of minutes, I can jump on and see what's happening. Twitter is PD on demand.

2. Read It Later This is an amazing little tool! I have the free read it later app on my iDevices, and have installed the plugin for Firefox. Basically this allows you, with one or two clicks, to save those websites that you come across, that you don't have time to process immediately, to a 'reading list' for a later time. I have a button in my links bar that goes straight to my reading list (http://readitlaterlist.com/unread). Twitter for iOS is fully integrated with Read It Later and has a two-tap saving process. The firefox plugin is even better, and has a small arrow embedded into the URL bar that will save any link for later with a single click. The free iOS app seems to be limited to around 4 pages of links, but that is a good cue that it's time to set aside 30 minutes to process it all. (I just open each link in a new tab and go from there).

3. Diigo I could just bookmark my links, but then I would end up with a massive list of bookmarks, with no organisation at all. Enter Diigo. I've only been using this for a couple of weeks, and there are people who are more expert than I, but it is easy to use, and means your organised list is available anywhere. My main advice for those starting out is to tag everything! A toolbar is also available, which has incredible functionality. I now have a small, but growing list of educational resources that I have reviewed (this is important) and can go back to at any time. There is a whole other side to Diigo, which is the social bookmarking aspect, but I will go into that more at a later date. For now, any static websites or web 2.0 tools that I come across get saved in my Diigo list. Blogs that I discover go to Google Reader.

4. Google Reader and oldie but a goody. Although I've been using Google Reader for years, I hadn't subscribed to any educational blogs until very recently. I had subscribed to numerous personal and humour blogs, and didn't really want to be faced with 'work' every time I wanted to do some recreational reading (or... ahem... laugh at photos of cats). Then I discovered folders! If you scroll right to the bottom of your subscription list you will see a tiny blue link to 'manage subscriptions'

 

This takes you to a new screen, on which you can sort out all of your subscriptions.  Now I have folders for Teaching, Interest, Photography and Humour. Depending on what I feel like reading, I can click on the relevant folder and have only the posts from those blogs show up. Of course I also have a reader app on my iDevices. Another nifty Reader tool that not many know about is the bookmarklet (IE & Firefox - and probably Chrome). This is a little button that sits in my links bar that I can click on any time I find a blog I want to follow. It will redirect you to Reader, where you can click once more to subscribe. Get it here.

These four simple tools make it much easier to stay in control of the constant flow of information!